Put to Bed: These Are the Forgotten Pickup Trucks, Volume I — caranddriver.com

When General Motors purchased the Hummer brand from AM General in 1999, seven years after the Humvee was developed into a commercial product, it planned to sprout a lineup from a single model. Much like today, gas was cheap, and people were eating up big SUVs. So, for the 2002 model year, it launched the Chevrolet Tahoe–based Hummer H2. Shortly after initial excitement surrounding the launch of the reborn brand and the new model ballooned, sales started to trail off. Many found the design to be offensive, the V-8 chugged gasoline faster than Frank “The Tank” Ricard put down beer during a keg stand, and the platform wasn’t nearly as off-road capable as its progenitor. In an attempt to keep things fresh, GM released the H2 SUT (Sport Utility Truck) for the 2005 model year. It had a mounted spare tire on the tailgate that made towing far more annoying than it needed to be and a midgate that, when the rear seats were folded down, expanded the miniature truck bed into the cabin of the SUV. Somehow, the SUT didn’t kill the brand right then and there, as GM went on to build the H3 and subsequently the H3 pickup. —Tony Markovich

Read More